The Creators Project
By Gabrielle Bruney — Feb 6 2016
![Abstraction #1, Transmogrify II by Michael Massaia](https://gallery270.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/12-Abstraction1-massaia-1024x829-1.jpg)
Chewed gum is an irritant mostly found on the bottoms of shoes and the undersides of tables. But through the lens of printmaker and photographer Michael Massaia, chewed gum is a beautiful medium for semi-abstracted sculpture. “All of the images are created from a single piece of chewed gum,” Massaia writes of his process. “I mold all the shapes by using my hand, tongue, and teeth… After I mold them, I mount them onto black plexiglass (or face mount them to regular glass), and photograph the sculpture using either a Creo scanner or a large format camera.”
![Broken Heart, Transmogrify II by Michael Massaia](https://gallery270.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/1-Broken-Heart-massaia-786x1024-1.jpg)
He doesn’t sculpt the gum digitally or colorize it, though he does use high-contrast prints that intensify their colors and texture. It was during an idle gum-chewing session that Massaia realized that bubblegum had the potential to look disarmingly organic. “One night I was sitting around, chewing gum, and blowing bubbles. For some reason I removed a blown intact bubble from my mouth, shaped like a human heart, and looked at it on a light box. I was so amazed by how much it looked like actual organ tissue,” he tells The Creators Project. “The depth, and complexity of the textures was way beyond anything I could have imagined.”
![Embryos, Transmogrify II by Michael Massaia](https://gallery270.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2-Embryos-massaia-845x1024-1.jpg)
“By combining this new medium with photography, I felt as if a whole new world was open to me courtesy of Hubba Bubba.”
![A New Life, Sea Creature #3, Transmogrify II by Michael Massaia](https://gallery270.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/10-A-New-Life-Sea-Creautre3-massaia-695x1024-1.jpg)